23 



year. This paper dealt with exactly the same points which I had dis- 

 cussed in my memoir on the »Reproductive Elements in Myxine gluti- 

 nosm published in the Quart. Journ. Micr. Sc. in August, 1886. To 

 a very large extent Dr. Nansen acknowledges his indebtedness to my 

 work, and tbe priority of my discovery of the facts considered. But as 

 both his title and his summary at the end of the paper seem to imply 

 that the facts described were his own discoveries, it has occurred more 

 than once that writers have referred the discovery of the »protandric<r 

 hermaphroditism of Myxine to Dr. Nansen. It is not my intention to 

 dwell on this point now, but merely to point out that the only novelty 

 in Dr. Nan s en's description of the hermaphroditism of Myxine is the 

 adjective »protandric« which did not occur in my paper. At the same 

 time I am very glad that my results should have received full confir- 

 mation at the hands of another zoologist. 



I have never been able to satisfy myself from reading Dr. Nan- 

 sen's paper to what extent he himself intended to claim credit in this 

 matter by his title. He quotes my paper correctly and largely in his 

 historical introduction, but when he comes to my description of the 

 spermatozoa he says »The description and illustrations which Cun- 

 ningham gives of these spermatozoa do not agree with my obser- 

 vations of the real spermatozoa of Myxine, which I have found in the 

 greatest abundance. I am afraid that what he has found has been the 

 abnormal product of an, in this respect abnormal specimen«. 



My original description was as follows : The spermatozoa possess 

 a pear-shaped head, which is very highly réfringent and has a distinct 

 outline ; round the posterior, thicker end of the head is a translucent 

 protoplasmic body which is produced into a long tail. In some cases 

 two spermatozoa were connected by their tails, and on the connecting 

 thread thus produced were slight dilatations composed of clear proto- 

 plasm. In other cases a cell somewhat spherical in shape gave off two 

 processes, one of which was the tail of a spermatozoon while the other 

 terminated in a point, the head of the spermatozoon belonging to the 

 process having probably become detached in the operation of teasing. 



It is evident that the cells and spermatozoa described were 



derived from the spherical cells of the testicular capsules. These cells 

 apparently develope the heads of the spermatozoa which then grow out 

 from the cells trailing a thread of protoplasm which forms the tail. The 

 curious thing about the spermatogenesis observed in Myxine is that the 

 spermatozoa are attached to the spermatoblasts by the tails and not by 

 their heads as usually occurs. 



After quoting this description Dr. Nansen says »Those strange 

 statements are completely erroneous as regards the structure of the 



